Golden Brown

It is as much a Budget tradition as the battered red box, the weeks of purdah or the glass of whiskey perched on the despatch box. The only difference is that this tradition has actually survived into the Gordon Brown era, with a classic display yesterday. It is the post-Budget custom best summed up as second day, second thoughts.

From left and right, voices could be heard mumbling: "Now, hold on a minute . . . " as hands standing patting pockets and checking wallets. Economists pointed out that much of the multi-digit sums of spending being announced were in fact combinations of previous and future giveaways all confusingly rolled into one. The right complained that there were still too many stealth taxes; the left grumbled that the rich had not been squeezed enough.

There's something to be said for most of these worries, even if they are the typical anxieties of the morning after a euphoric night before. But they should not obscure the more striking fact about Gordon Brown's third budget. Tuesday's effort by the Chancellor was a political masterpiece, one that could secure the fortunes both of this Government and of Mr Brown himself.

The scale of the Chancellor's triumph was conveyed by the front page of yesterday's Sun. "Everyone's a winner," the once-Labour loathing paper declared. The point is not so much whether the Sun's verdict was right or wrong, but that it delivered it at all. For a Labour Chancellor to receive an endorsement from a Murdoch-owned tabloid for a redistributive budget is an astonishing political achievement. In winning it, Mr Brown has proved that it is possible to achieve progressive goals and remain within the electoral parameters set by four consecutive Labour defeats - results which made the outright, unabashed, tax-and-spend brand of redistribution politically out of bounds. By announcing both a tax cut and help for the poor and the weak, breaks for business and spending on health and education, Mr Brown has commandeered both Labour and Conservative territory. He has allowed the right no real ground on which to attack, even as he has done the work of the left. Before the Budget, Labour aides talked of the Dentists' Chair Strategy - casting the British people as the patient who asks the dentist when the painful bit will start, only to be told it's already happened. Gordon Brown has become the Painless Potter of economic orthodonty, extracting money from the better off so that they never feel a thing.

This leaves the Tories flailing, no matter how effective their leader on the floor of the House of Commons. William Hague performed well, but he is bereft of intellectual artillery. He has still failed to resolve the Conservatives' perennial dilemma over New Labour: whether to attack them for being Old Labour in disguise or as copycat Tories. The first line flies in the face of all the evidence, while the latter has become a compliment. They simply cannot win.

The result is that the Brown budget of 1999 may well have secured Labour in office for the immediate future. The glow of goodwill from the April 2000 tax cut should last into a general election in the spring of 2001 - or even a snap contest in October 2000, as some Tories fear. It should also slow down anti-Labour momentum in Scotland and Wales in time for the May elections there. The upshot will be a debt of gratitude to Gordon Brown that all Labourites will feel. As his TV address illustrated, he may not have the charm and smile of his next-door neighbour, but Mr Brown has laid and shaped the economic foundations of this Labour government. Should the opportunity ever come to express its thanks, the Labour Party will know what to do.